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Thursday, May 17, 2012

Team Krista #5: SILO

Title:
SILOGenre:
YA speculative fictionWord
count: 84,000

Query:

After a global disaster strikes, seventeen-year-old Lizzie
Wallace is kidnapped from the rubble of her high school in Los Angeles and flown across the devastated
country. Her new home is an underground silo hidden deep in the Adirondack Mountains. In this modern-day Noah's Ark, the children are paired--male and female, ranging in age from ten to eighteen. They are the future,
each one chosen for their special skill to rebuild society. There's only one
problem--Lizzie doesn't have the skill they think she does.

Her repeated failure at growing their food cements her
belief that she doesn't belong. Even her growing attraction to her chosen mate,
Brand, doesn't stop her from plotting to escape and return to the family she
knows is frantic about her. But when desperate looters breach the silo and
murder her kidnapper, Lizzie learns the truth about why she was chosen. Now she
must decide: Stay to defend the silo and her friends or fight her way back to
her family in Los Angeles.

First
page:

The first explosion rocks the room, sending my books flying
off the desk. The second makes the ground tremble and the lights flicker. Ms.
Clark drops the dry eraser and grabs the corner of her large desk. I brace for
a third and don't have to wait long. This one flings the glass specimen jars from
the walls, smashing them onto the concrete floor. The smells of formaldehyde
and death fill the science class.

"Everyone remain calm," Ms. Clark says.

"Should we get under our desks?" I ask.

Ms. Clark, now frozen in place, doesn’t respond. I don’t
wait for an answer, crawling under my desk.

“Lizzie,” Christopher calls to me, but in the chaos I can’t
find him. Bodies swarm everywhere in panic. Doesn’t anyone remember the drills
we’ve been practicing for a decade now? We’ve been hearing about The Big One
since we could walk. They’ve trained us for this. Get under your desks, curl
into a little rock, and remain calm until the earthquake stops.

Only this isn’t stopping. The ground shakes again and the
lights go out. Screams and sobs reverberate over the din of the creaking
building, its beams groaning in protest.

I feel a hand on my arm, strong and warm. I don’t even have
to look to know whose it is. I have every callous on Christopher's hand
memorized, including the wart he keeps cutting off that stubbornly grows back
on the inside of his thumb. I grab his hand, lacing my fingers through his, and
squeeze tight.

This query is economical and intriguing. I did think that there were a few sentences that could be phrased better, though. The “to” in “their special skill to rebuild society” strikes me as not specific enough—maybe something like “the special skill that will help them rebuild society” would work better. I’d also replace the em-dash with a colon between “problem” and “Lizzie” in the following sentence.

I think that the last sentence in the query could also be better stated. I’d lose the colon and go with “between staying…or fighting…”

First page:

WOW—this page blew me away. I really felt like I was right there in the classroom with them, experiencing the disaster. Your sensory details are perfect, and you show us so much about the MC’s relationship with Christopher just through the comment about his callouses.

Nitpicks: If Ms. Clark is about to go catatonic, you might want to use a different verb than “says,” which makes it sound to me like she has it together. Maybe she should whimper that line? Also, I’d change “desks” to “desk” in “Get under your desks…” since you follow it with “a little rock” rather than “little rocks” (which would sound weird). Just keep your singulars/plurals consistent.